FUCK this. No, really.

My car, the Piece of Shit I've been driving for nine years and have poured more than twice as much into as I paid for it, is dead. Goddamned thing died on me ON THE FREEWAY, with Tegan in the backseat. You don't know anger until you're standing on the side of a freeway with a two-year-old on your shoulder.

Fortunately we were near a friend's place, and she came to get Tegan while I handled the car until Elli could come collect us. I think it's the alternator, but I'm not positive. Currently the car is sitting at Gofland in Roseville; it's ok there for three days, by which time I have to either move it or start paying impound fees.

An alternator is probably not that expensive, but we haven't got the money for it right now, and even if we did, 1) I'm not sure the car is worth the effort anymore (the engine's been making Death Rattles), and 2) I'm not sure the alternator is an easy enough repair for me to do it--I've done them before, but not on this car.

I want to put an ad on Craigslist that says "Pay me $500 (half the Blue Book value) and cart it off yourself." But that's probably not the smartest thing to do. We're exploring options.

Fuck this.

On the edge

Ok. I know, intellectually, that Elli and I aren't doing as bad, financially speaking, as it feels; this is another temporary cashflow problem that will settle eventually. I know that the likelihood is that we'll muddle through somehow. But damn it if it doesn't feel like this is a spiral into oblivion and bankruptcy we'll never get out of.

We've given up just about everything we could. We don't have Cable or DirecTV, we have TiVo, but that's less than $15/mo. Our television comes off the airwaves. Our only not-completely-necessary expense left is our cell phones and internet, and neither of us wants to give those up. The 'net doesn't cost much per month anyway, but our cell phones are expensive, and I sometimes wonder if we ought to give them up. But we have a child, and not being able to get hold of each other if we're not home or at work is a problem--and if we didn't have them, today would have been a lot worse, as I'd have been carting a baby down the freeway looking for an exit. Which would have taken about an hour. Not good.

And it's not like our mortgage is killing us. We're only paying a little more than we were renting for. We did consider moving into a smaller place and renting for a few more years, saving the difference. But we saw a decent deal and went for it. Nobody to blame there.

But it feels different than the reality.